Pros and Cons: Is Dwyane Wade Leaving Jordan Brand for Li-Ning?

Lance Madden
, SubscriberI break down sports business and fashion, on and off the field.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Dwyane Wade || Credit: Getty Images via @daylife

Multiple rumors and reports began surfacing across the Internet late Thursday and early Friday that Dwyane Wade would be leaving Jordan Brand for Chinese Sportswear company Li-Ning. Speculation was made as far back as this summer, though neither side has yet to confirm.

Nick DePaula of Sole Collector said the deal between Wade and the Jordan Brand didn't work out in part because Wade signed on with the shoe giant with the understanding that he would be the face of the annual Air Jordan shoe each February. But when Joe Johnson, Gerald Wallace and other players got in the way during Wade's first All-Star Weekend with the brand, things went south.

Moving Carmelo Anthony, another Jordan Brand rep, from Denver into a larger sports market in New York, was good for the brand. But it did the same thing Wade was seeking to avoid, bringing more people into the Jordan Brand limelight. Wade showed just how selfless he is, allowing LeBron James to come to Miami to help win a championship. But when it comes to branding, it would make sense that he would want to be on his own now that he's more established than he was a decade ago.

Wade -- voted by his NBA peers in 2011 as having the best fashion sense off the court -- originally signed to Nike-owned converse during his rookie season in 2003. In 2009 he made the move to the Jordan Brand for more than $10 million per year. “For me, the move to Jordan Brand is a dream come true," he said at the time. "As a kid, I grew up on the south side of Chicago idolizing Michael Jordan and have worked hard to achieve the same success that he’s had on the court. I have enormous respect for this brand and all that it stands for. I’m humbled to be a part of the Team Jordan family and I’m looking forward to a great future.”

Three years have come and gone. People grow, and business decisions are made for difference reasons. Here are some pros and cons to leaving the Nike powerhouse for the Chinese-based Li-Ning brand.

PRO: Wade gets independence from LeBron James. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade are best friends and they feed off of each other tremendously on the court. But from a marketing perspective, having Wade in a pair of shoes other than Nikes could be beneficial to him. James doesn't rep Jordan Brand, but his self-branded shoes and Jordan Brand shoes are both still under the Nike umbrella. Having Wade stand out for a new brand could help sales.

PRO: Li-Ning would still dish out a lot of money. The Chinese brand brought Shaq into its family, but he was on the tail end of his career at that point. Baron Davis endorses Li-Ning, but even though he's a great player and has a good amount of star power, he too has the majority of his career behind him. Li-Ning wants a huge star. They could get that from Wade. And they'd pay for him handsomely.

CON: The Jordan Brand is stable. Michael Jordan and Nike changed the sneaker game forever. Knight is now a Hall of Famer, officially, largely because of the boom Jordan caused in SneakerLand. The Jordan Brand has the most iconic name in basketball tied to it, and its success is not going away for a long time, if ever.

PRO: Chinese brands aren't all that bad. Yes, Nike owned the gold-winning U.S. Olympic basketball team. But even though he wore Nikes during The Games, there was one player on the team who reps a non-Nike brand during the regular season. Kevin Love endorses Chinese-based company 361 Degrees. He is allowed to "double dip" thanks to a clause in his contract. Perhaps Wade will get a similar clause. Many players, namely Kobe Bryant, do better with sneaker sales overseas than in the U.S. Could Wade follow the same trend? Time will tell.